For months, the national political press had been strangely softened about a November 2007 National Enquirer tabloid story that claimed to offer proof that former Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Edwards had been byzantine in an extramarital involvement, as well as a more recent Enquirer story that claimed the affair may have resulted in the parentage of an illegitimate child.
But on Friday (August 8), after months of denials, Edwards, admitted that he had carried on an affair with Rielle Hunter, though he has denied paternity of the kid. The revelation came in an interview with ABC News, in which the former North Carolina senator confessed to lying during his run for president about the affair with the budding 44-year-old filmmaker.
Though he has not taken a paternity test, Edwards reportedly told ABC News that he knew he was not the father of Hunter's child, Frances Quinn, based on the timing of the baby's birth, February 27, 2008. He said the matter ended too soon for him to have been the father, though in a flakey twist, ane of Edwards' campaign hades, Andrew Young, has aforesaid that he is the father of the baby.
Late Friday afternoon, Edwards issued a statement that reads in part: "In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognised my fault and I told my wife that I had a link with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every dreadful detail with my syndicate, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the tale, I victimized the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough.
"I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never turn public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I adopt full responsibleness publicly. ... I only know that the apparent father-God has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also give birth not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, in agreement to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the seeming father of the baby."
The revelation of the covered-up affair is a immense blow to the political career of the charismatic, 54-year-old one-term senator and 2004 vice-presidential hopeful, wHO has exhausted much of the past tense four years working on poverty issues and, ahead dropping out in January, visiting the key states in the 2008 presidential election.
On Thursday, his hometown newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, quoted several prominent local politicians urging Edwards to more vehemently confront the Enquirer allegations or else risk losing a big speaking expansion slot at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. That prime time spot now seems all out of reach, and an analyst on CNN speculated that the disclosure of the deceit could also jeopardise Edwards' chances of getting a position in a Democratic White House should Senator Barack Obama gain in November � or even of continuing his political vocation at all.
According to CNN, Edwards' married woman, Elizabeth Edwards � wHO has been very ill with a recurrence of cancer � became mindful of the affair in 2006. When first confronted with the story following an October 2007 write up in the tabloid, Edwards and his campaign staff strongly denied it, with Edwards recounting reporters at the time, "The news report is sham, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous." The Edwardses get been matrimonial since 1977 and have two young daughters and a son. A fourth child, Wade, died at age 16 in a car accident.
ABC reported that according to Hunter's friends, she and Edwards met at a New York bar in 2006 and she pitched him on the approximation of qualification a film about his campaign and he agreed, later remunerative her $114,000 to direct campaign Web site documentaries, despite her lack of experience behind the camera. Edwards, named the "sexiest politician alive" by People magazine in 2000, told the network that the function began during his run for chair after she was hired and began traveling with the candidate around the country and to Africa.
Edwards said that his wife � wHO vowed to campaign alongside her hubby last year despite a serious diagnosis of an incurable conformation of genus Cancer � was in remittance from the disease when he began the matter with Hunter. While Edwards is surely not the first politician to be caught lying about an extramarital involvement, the long-running deceit around his affaire has set the former senator up for peculiar scorn from the Washington press corps, who pounced on the story Friday of a politician world Health Organization had often made his family a big portion of his campaigns o'er the old age and world Health Organization had held his wife up as an example of a strong, reasoning partner in his public endeavors.
The Enquirer reported lately that Edwards had visited Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last calendar month, and Edwards admitted to ABC News that the report was true and that his wife had not known about the meeting. The Enquirer reported that Edwards spent five-spot hours in Hunter's room that day, and when confronted by the tabloid's staffers at the hotel after trying to leave through a basement exit, he ran into a public bathroom and tried to hide out and obstruct their entrance into the rest room with his body.
Once pregnant, Hunter lived under a series of assumed name calling in a number of expensive homes in North Carolina and Santa Barbara, California, according to ABC. Edwards denied paying Hunter any money to keep her from taking their affair public but told ABC it's possible some of his friends or supporters may have made payments to her without telling him.
[This story was originally published at 4:41 p.m. ET on 08.08.2008]
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